Campus to welcome new Rose
installation
By Rachel Hughes
Arts Editor
Published: Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Updated: Tuesday, November 12, 2013 03:11
As the culmination of several months of research and
negotiations, the Rose Art Museum will acquire a piece
that the museum’s organizers hope will change the way
that students interact with the museum as a fixture of
campus life. The piece, which will soon be under
construction and will be completely installed at the
entrance of the Rose by late April, is a permanent
outdoor installation created by artist Chris Burden.
Courtesy of Landworks Studio, Inc.
BrandeisNOW released a computergenerated projection of the installation
yesterday. The piece will be installed
outside of the Rose Art Museum.
Born in Boston, Burden has been an active artist since
the early 1970s and has worked with the mediums of
installation, sculpture and performance art. Burden has
created a piece called “Light of Reason” for the Rose to be placed outside of the entrance to the
museum. Burden took conceptual inspiration from the seal of the University, and garnered its title
from the words of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who said “[i]f we would guide by the light of reason,
we must let our minds be bold.” Analogous to the three torches, hills and Hebrew phrase on the
University seal, the architectural composition of the installation is meant to ensure that it remains
as an enduring work on campus.
The piece was acquired through the Rose’s restricted acquisitions fund, a resource that is secured
only for the acquisition of works of visual art, whose places in the museum’s permanent collection
contribute to the museum’s longevity. Although the installation will cost the museum two million
dollars, the Rose staff reasons that the investment will pay off because thousands of visitors that
the museum sees each year will come to know the Rose as an art destination by its new
http://www.thejustice.org/campus-to-welcome-new-rose-installation-1.3117167#.UoIrqJSFSI0?compArticle=yes
characteristic entrance.
The installation will be a fixture of longevity at the Rose, and Bedford is hopeful that it will
become integrated into campus. “I imagine the sculpture serving various different functions at
Brandeis and for the Rose as an icon for the University and for the museum as part of the
University,” Bedford said. “It’s supposed to operate as a thoroughfare or ushering people in and
out of the museum, from campus into the museum, out from the museum onto campus. It’s
symbolic of the connection.”
Rose Art Museum director Christopher Bedford gave a public statement about his anticipation for
the installation in a BrandeisNOW press release yesterday. “Brandeis has a history of radical
innovation in the visual arts,” he said. “The decision to add to that collection a landmark sculpture
by Chris Burden, one of our most important living artists, is conceived in accordance with
Brandeis’ history of prescience and greatness in collecting and presenting the art of our time.”
Bedford also has a longstanding professional relationship with Burden, as he described in a
interview with the Justice. The two met almost seven years ago while involved with the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. “I think it was around that time as a curatorial assistant and an
assistant curator at LACMA, that I got to know him doing research for a dissertation … and I began
visiting him at his studio,” Bedford explained.
Bedford said that his vision for the installation is one that focuses largely on community. “I
imagined it as space for social activity, artistic activity, both scripted and improvised. So when I
imagine that, I think musical performances, theater, performance art, a cappella, as well as really
just a place for students and faculty and members of the general public to meet,” he said.
Students can look forward to construction beginning soon, during which time Burden will be on
campus frequently, checking in on both the installation and the response to his work.
—Phil Gallagher contributed reporting
http://www.thejustice.org/campus-to-welcome-new-rose-installation-1.3117167#.UoIrqJSFSI0?compArticle=yes